smashed my first transformer can

[mr_m3]

Knocking a yeasu ft-77 back on frequency and broken my first ever transformer can, with a plastic trimming too aswell! was pushing down too hard and crack, there she goes,

it's only taken 16 years of messing around with radios for it to happen.

Now the ebay hunt for a IF board or a spares radio to get it 100% again

[Andy]

Easily done. Ferrite is hard but brittle and if the wax has set hard after a few years the core will crack as you try to turn it. Whenever I'm re-aligning, if I feel any resistance I warm the soldering iron up and gently heat the core, remove it and clean off the wax before re-inserting it for alignment. I have a 'night light' candle on my bench as a source of new wax to seal the core once it had been finally twizzed.

[lbcomms]

We've seen a lot of "golden screwdrivered" repair radios here where someone used a jewelers screwdriver or a kitchen knife in a tune attempt and cracked the ferrite. As long as the damage isn't too bad (i.e. they stopped when they heard the crack and didn't force anything), most of them are recoverable by removing the can and unscrewing from the other end of the slug.

[Ant]

Sometimes when realigning a radio, I'll unwind the ferrite completely, clean it up and wrap PTFE around it, then wind it back in and set the radio up. I try to use a plastic tip to avoid damage and it it's a stubborn one, then as above use some heat or I've often used a touch of WD-40 to ease it.